Depends on what you mean by "pure mage." I suppose you could put all your talents into smarts, endurance, Signs, and alchemy, but I think you'd still be hitting things with your sword pretty often. I've no doubt the game would be winnable that way; I don't know how much FUN it would be, though.

It's a shame about the difficulty levels; Hard should really be Normal, and there should be one level above Hard.

Maxed out fire and stunning signs are extremely powerful and will let you waltz through the endgame (I didnt develop my sword talents past silver as the power-up feature killed the flow of my attacks). Prior to that you wont have enough mana or oomph to rely on magic alone.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
The Koshchey is a right bastard even with those signs tho. At least on Hard.

That's true, and Javed is obviously not a good target for the fire sign either.

As for our canine friend it sure helps to stun him, I've gotten so fed up with that particular fight that I just try to stun him and reload immediately if it fails… That fight might be the only thing the game got dead wrong

Yup. And worse, it forces you to do that stupid dialog and cutscene every time you die.

There is a pretty reliable way to whack him, though, but it took me, like, for ever to discover it. (On Hard, he's highly unlikely to be knocked over by Aard.)

Spoiler

He spawns new barghests every time you kill them, so kill two, and then focus on the hellhound. If Abigail is with you, either the remaining barghest will attack her, which means you'll be able to fight the hellhound unimpeded (she can hold off one barghest for a quite a while), or it'll attack you, in which case she'll be able to heal you unimpeded. Either way, the fight becomes quite winnable.

It would be an interesting challenge to try it as a pure mage, since in my playthroughs, I mainly concentrated on Aardt and Igni, and therefore did not develop the other signs to their full potential. The only problem might be that you might find yourself running short of Endurance (mana) at times, even with potions…

I did have a lot of fun killing monsters from a distance with Igni only in the swamps, but I'm not so sure about big mobs and bosses…

When you say "pure" mage, do mean not using weapons at all, or simply not developing them, in favour of rather developing the Signs?